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Earlier this week, I put the finishing touches to the But Milk Is Important soundtrack that is playing at the Volda Animation Festival this weekend! I will be uploading more of the OST soon with some insight into capturing Anna and Eirik’s vision through music (check out my updated portfolio track below and the portfolio page for a slice of the OST)

For now, here’s one of the film’s characters in a Norwegian newspaper below (the little grey dude on the bottom right).

I haven’t blogged in months because I’ve been really working hard on the hard work Anna & Eirik’s been working hard on. That’s right hard on. I’m really excited. Just look at this still from But Milk Is Important!

I’m excited because I’ve seen a lot of the finished masterpiece they’ve been creating and its breath taking. Seeing something from storyboard, to modelling, to movement and to a living, breathing (almost) final production is spellbinding enough… but when it’s stop time animation in the hands of Anna and Eirik. Holy shit. It’s awesome!

The working relationship I have with these talented people in Norway stems from a friendship formed with Eirik in the U.K before he flew home to pursue this badass project with Anna. Now, after months of sending each other work through the googles I’m managing to capture the dark, mysterious atmosphere they’ve created for their sometimes frightening/sometimes funny/always fascinating characters.

Eirik suggested to me not to shy away from playing quite a bit of piano for this film after I used it in our last adventure and in using it again to write a large part of this score I can certainly see its attraction. The piano evokes parts of me when I play it that other instruments can’t get to. The isolation and loneliness I relate to when I watch aspects of the animation are translated so fluently through the keys and is a testament to me how human the instrument can feel. Another important aspect of the composition in this film is back masking. There’s a lot of tension and unexplainable occurrences that back masking pianos, cymbals and synthesized sounds can reflect well against. It’s a suggestion that things aren’t quite as they seem and a sweet way to hide satanic messages (joke). It’s an opposite, a reverse to the norm and a representation of the emotional themes haunting our main character. Talking of themes, I also felt that the characters with their own very specific characteristics deserved their own very specific music (something Ennio Morricone stamped into me as a young poncho wearing, gun toting tot whilst my brother would watch the spaghetti westerns). I think it’s a valid method in such a mysterious film where character’s actions speak louder than their words.

So I seriously suggest you check out Anna and Eirik’s blog again as they constantly update it with sweet developments, especially as the filming is now complete and they’re in the process of post production. At this stage I’m finely tuning things like the timing of the music to accommodate any scene extensions and artistic direction from the guys whilst they work harder and harder to achieve the perfection that is But Milk Is Important.